![]() defense secretary Leon Panetta warned that the United States was vulnerable to a “cyber Pearl Harbor" that could derail trains, poison water supplies, and cripple power grids. Because someone could unsuspectingly infect a machine this way, letting the worm proliferate over local area networks, experts feared that the malware had perhaps gone wild across the world. If a worker stuck a USB thumb drive into an infected machine, Stuxnet could, well, worm its way onto it, then spread onto the next machine that read that USB drive. Stuxnet could spread stealthily between computers running Windows-even those not connected to the Internet. Although a computer virus relies on an unwitting victim to install it, a worm spreads on its own, often over a computer network. Recognition of such threats exploded in June 2010 with the discovery of Stuxnet, a 500-kilobyte computer worm that infected the software of at least 14 industrial sites in Iran, including a uranium-enrichment plant. headquarters in Woburn, Mass., battling the most insidious digital weapons ever, capable of crippling water supplies, power plants, banks, and the very infrastructure that once seemed invulnerable to attack. ![]() As a senior researcher for Kaspersky Lab, a leading computer security firm based in Moscow, Roel Schouwenberg spends his days (and many nights) here at the lab's U.S. This office might seem no different than any other geeky workplace, but in fact it's the front line of a war-a cyberwar, where most battles play out not in remote jungles or deserts but in suburban office parks like this one. ![]() A life-size Batman doll stands in the hall. ![]() Cryptic flowcharts are scrawled across various whiteboards adorning the walls. ![]()
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